Burned Forest

The Heart Realm was a sacred forest centered around the World Tree, the avatar of Heart God, which served as a pillar supporting heaven and earth. Free from Corruption due to the Void's inability to influence it, the realm thrived with human civilizations built upon the tree's vast branches. During the Age of Heroes, the World Tree fell victim to an Unholy Terror, a living remnant of the Age of Chaos, which caused it to rot and decay. The Demon of Repose intervened by forcing the tree into endless rejuvenation until the Terror was destroyed, though the process obliterated the human settlements within its branches. As payment, she took a branch of the World Tree to create the Night Garden, a colossal living ship that survived as the last remnant of the Heart Realm's great forest.^[4]

The Burned Forest had once been the Sacred Forest, and at its center stood the unfathomably large stump of the World Tree, the avatar of Heart God. This place was a charred remnant of what had once been a thriving and divine realm, tied to the god of souls, emotions, memory, growth, and hunger. The Sacred Forest had grown from the World Tree, whose sweet fruit attracted many beings, causing them to remain in the Heart Realm forever and nurture its growth. With their help, the World Tree spread and formed the vast forest. The Burned Forest, however, was what remained after its destruction. Sunny noted that the World Tree and the Sacred Forest had once endured a dreadful ice age — with the aid of the Demon of Repose — only to eventually burn in the end. Its ruin carried echoes of both nurturing and insidious aspects, reflecting the duality of gods who existed beyond good and evil. The Burned Forest was one of the few lasting traces of Heart God that Sunny had encountered, alongside places like the Desecrated Grove and sacred trees tied to the fates of others. Its destruction, preserved in the fragmented lore of Memories such as the [Memory of Ice] and the [Memory of Fire], told the forgotten tale of the primordial humans and creatures of the Sacred Forest, remembered now only through the Nightmare Spell.^[5]